Ala-Kul Trek - Day 1

We woke up bright and early on Saturday to get a head start on our hike (14km today). We decided to take a taxi instead of a marshrutka to the national park because this would save us about 7km of walking on a boring dirt road. We were supposed to share this taxi with a French couple we met at our hostel, but they were so unorganized and late for the taxi that we just left without them. In hindsight, we are glad we took the taxi anyway because we needed to save as much energy as we could for day 2 of the hike. After a very bumpy 40min drive, we arrived at the start of the trek in a beautiful valley. We walked in the valley for about 3 hours, before crossing a river and climbing up a steep hill and rock scrambling to get to our yurt camp for the night. We were both feeling quite sick, and were thankfully able to get a mini yurt to ourselves, instead of sharing the larger yurt with 7 other people. The lovely boys running the yurt camp served us tea, plov for dinner and started a campfire for us. There was no running water, the toilet was literally a hole in the ground (with a pop up tent over it) and we slept on thin mattresses on the ground in our yurt, but we were happy to have somewhere warm and private to sleep.Read more